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(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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It's incredibly silly that even tho we advance the scale of power, with electricity, solar and even nuclear, all we use it is to boil water. We just can't seem to be able t build any a more advanced mechanism, it seems.
Photovoltaics
in meme form
Instasaved!
Actually if you look inside the cells it's just a tiny little pocket of boiling water
That's actually what they dope the silicon with, one really angry water molecule.
😭
(it's not btw, this is satire)
Guess what I'm boiling with the power from that solar panel
Hard to beat spinning a magnet to generate electricity, and it's hard to beat boiling water to spin a magnet
Fair point magnets are basically a superpower by themselves.
So is water. Hard to beat a miracle fluid that covers most of our planet.
“Worldbuilders hate this trick! Cover most of your world in water so you have less stuff to figure out names for.”
I think this may be due to the specific heat of water, no other substance matches it.
Fair point it's been so long since I last took a chemistry course that if I knew anything cool and hidden about water, I'd have trouble resurfacing it. I do know they call it "dihydrogen monoxide" in some reports tho.
Really? I thought that was just a "sticker on the waterbottle joke"
It should be, if even that, but as usual there's people who take jokes far too far. Like, I'm sure there's a Church of Flath-Earthism recognized somewhere. In the US. Southern US.
Wind and photovoltaic have nothing to do with water
Mfw they use wind and photovoltaic energy to pump water to a high place so they can put it through a turbine later
I'd guess because its all heat energy in the end, so you need something that expands and compresses. The only alternative I suppose would be like sound waves, or mechanical energy, or whatever a battery does.
That does make sense, but then again, it's been 2000 years and we can't find something that boils, expands and compresses better than water? Or is t just because water is commonplace enough in comparisoan?
I am sure that they have, but there's a lot more to it than just that. They have to consider long term maintenance, safety, and availability of parts.
Water is known and well established, you can buy a lot of stuff right off the shelf and we know it's short and long term dangers. Everything else gets expensive and unknown very quickly.
I always assume they had additives in closed loop systems, but you're right you'd think there would be something.
Started looking into what liquids they are using and realized i was reading treatment chemicals they add to the boiler water. I know there's some reactors that use molten salt, but they are just used as energy transfer to.... the boiler full of water. Lol. The properties of water expansion from liquid to steam probably can't be beat or it's qualities of cheap, simple, good enough.
Somebody linked above to a new closed loop turbine design which uses supercritical CO2. I know from CO2 refrigeration that CO2 has some insane volumetric expansion based on temp which makes it a good candidate for use in a closed loop turbine system. Plus, because they're running it through the turbine as a supercritical fluid, the density is higher than that of steam so it requires smaller turbines. The biggest issue is that because it's super critical CO2 youre talking about working pressures well over 1000PSI. That doesn't make it impossible to work with as we already know from CO2 refrigeration, but it does make it a bit more difficult than just boiling water.
Friggin' CO₂ always causing issues.
I learned the other day there is a nuclear reactor in development that will use as primary coolant...molten lead.
Still use to boil water then, but pretty freaky still.
Water is a fucking insanely awesome material.
Good news!
https://youtu.be/BNDrC6fkjf0